Talented Leicester-based artist Lucy Stevens has produced a new body of work inspired by the natural history collection at New Walk Museum in Leicester, and it is now on display as part of a solo exhibition at the Lightbox Gallery at the LCB Depot in Leicester between until 12 June.
Working in collaboration with Bill Newsinger, a multi-media artist, Stevens has produced a variety of new works with a focus on the order, variety and beauty of colour in nature, using paint, wax pastels, spray paint, ink and 24 carat gold leaf.
The display comes after Lucy was awarded a solo exhibition at the Lightbox Gallery for her bold and colourful artworks as part of Open 29, which is held annually at New Walk Museum in 2018.
Stevens was inspired by Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, an early colour dictionary, outlining colour matches across the natural kingdoms. Darwin referred to it in his notebooks from the voyage of The Beagle. One of the most significant colour dictionaries’, A Nomenclature of Colours for Naturalists (1886), was developed by Robert Ridgeway, an American ornithologist for bird identification, which was developed in 1912 naming 1,115 colours, paving the way for the pantone colour charts of today.
In this exhibition, Stevens has used David Hay’s Nomenclature of colours as applicable to the arts and natural sciences, to manufactures and other purposes of general utility (1846), to develop a colour dictionary for bird identification based on the collection of bird skins at New Walk Museum.
Visitors can view the exhibition, free of charge, from 9.30am – 5pm Monday – Friday between Wednesday 29 May – Wednesday 12 June at the Lightbox Gallery, LCB Depot, 31 Rutland Street, Leicester LE1 1RE. Why not tie it in with a visit to Grays Coffee Shop or a trip to Last Friday for some street food?